During the resurgence of classic horror movies in the seventies, I discovered the Universal horror monsters. Frankenstein and his Bride, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, the Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera. Resplendent in black and white, I loved them all. But my favorite was Dracula, the King of the Undead, the Devil with a Drinking Problem, the Vein Attraction.
Dracula was the most popular, if not the original, cinematic vampire, as well as the hands down best dressed villain of all time. A true Lady’s Monster, he was charming, sleek, powerful and sexy. Compared to the Count and his superior facility for entrancing damsels, I was the Invisible Man with my transparently pathetic endeavors. I was “a nice boy,” which was the final nail in the dirt lined coffin.
I wanted to become like, if not actually be, Dracula. I mimicked the Count’s eerie facial expressions and claw-like hand gestures as I practiced my semi-viscous Romano-Hungarian accent. Inexplicably, it was not working as I had hoped. It appears that “I VHANT to DREENK your BLUD” is the worst pick-up line of all time, narrowly beating out “I want to eat your BRAINS” and “Hi, my name is Steve.”
While I prayed selected follicles would fall out so my hairline would more closely mirror Lugosi’s, I scoffed at the exaggerated widow’s peak worn by Eddie Munster, another pretentious young Dracula wannabe. I was undoubtedly the only teenager in the seventies who wanted less hair.
When I suggested painting my room black and illuminating it with hundreds of candles, Mom nixed the idea. Citing prohibitive insurance costs, she claimed “fire bad!”
Instead of candles, I tacked up a poster of the 1931 Dracula film. It depicted Bela Lugosi as Dracula regarding a lady’s neck the way a good Southern boy looks at a big platter of spare ribs.
I obsessed over a coffin to sleep in, even though they looked uncomfortable. That did not deter me, as I had never heard anyone complain that they lost sleep in one. In fact, the common consensus was that they were to die for.
After Mam-maw stitched an ominous black cape with a red lining for my sixteenth birthday, I began adding pieces to my costume. When I perfected it down to my spats, I could dress vampiric for any occasion. It was only with great self-control that I refrained from indulging myself on other holidays, thereby predating Jack Skellington’s ghoulish Yule antics by a generation.
According to Hollywood, Transylvania was home to a slew of supernatural monsters. The real Dracula, inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Victorian era vampire, lived and died there in the fifteenth century. A merciless leader in war, he was brutal and figuratively bloodthirsty. According to statues and portraits, he sported the original porn ‘stache long before it was cool.
In 2001, my friend Jose’s sister Valeria was a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania. Central Romania is a heavily forested area known as Transylvania. Each October, the Romanian Peace Corps threw a party that the Lonely Planet Guide deemed “The best Halloween party on the planet.” Jose, who had gone the year before, proclaimed it worth the trip, guaranteed. It doesn’t suck, he said. Not “bleh, bleh, bleh” at all!
Transylvania for Halloween sounded like a dream come true. The siren call of destiny suggested that I would finally make beautiful music with the children of the night, no saxophone necessary.
Our flight on SwissAir was so empty, it was like having a personal jet. Randy and I folded down all the seats in 2 rows and stretched out for the best nap I’ve ever had on a flight. Upon landing, we were surprised with a complete passenger complement of Swiss chocolate courtesy of our bored but generous airline crew.
We caught up with Jose in downtown Bucharest, a capitol city renowned for stunning Soviet style architecture. For “stunning”, read “miserable, colorless edifices of soul-crushing death.”
We exchanged cash for Romanian lei using a crazy exchange rate guaranteeing a calculator was necessary to confidently buy anything (“Wait, does this t-shirt cost 40 cents or 267 dollars?”).
On the train to Brasov, we passed through rustic countryside that looked untouched for a hundred years, complete with horse-drawn carts reminiscent of high school hay rides. Ah, those chilly, moonlit rides! Where my tender bits were poked by pointy bits of agriculture while I contemplated just how bored you had to be to take a freakin’ hay ride in the first place.
The Saturday evening before Halloween, we caught a taxi to the hostel where the costume party was about to begin. People in Romania did not celebrate Halloween, and although they knew nothing of the whole candy-fueled madness, they took any chance to paint the town blood red.
Jose and his sister and her friends dressed as characters from the Powerpuff Girls TV show. As HIM, an appropriately carmine colored devil, Jose’s face was slathered with crimson makeup. Soon there were red splotches and splatters on walls, glasses, other party-goers and nearly every surface. The place looked like Jack the Ripper had stopped by for a quick aperitif and some prostitute kidney tidbits (the original whore d’oeuvres).
Randy was a medieval knight straight out of Camelot as envisioned by Monty Python. Of course, I was decked out as Count Dracula, complete with plastic glow-in-the-dark fangs.
Never much of a party person, I mostly spent the night at a massive round table where the manager of the hostel, one “Asian Elvis” held court. Signs around the hostel offered free breast massages courtesy of Asian Elvis, but I deemed it unlikely that he was actually board certified.
In Romania, social events traditionally begin with a shot of Hungarian pálinka, which is indistinguishable from liquid rocket propellant. With an impressive alcohol content of 52%, pálinka can be used in a pinch to dissolve stubborn tar stains or inconvenient murder witnesses.
After our pálinka-fueled primary stage ignition, Elvis shared bottle after bottle of unfamiliar and intriguing beverages. Pretty soon, I lost track of
a) Randy, Jose, and Valeria,
b) the prodigious quantities of exotic booze I was guzzling, and,
c) all brain functionality above lizard level.
Having upgraded my camera for the trip, I discovered that digital cameras were rare in Eastern Europe. Everyone wanted their picture taken. Many requested a stint behind the lens and borrowed the camera while I sat cheerfully anesthetized. A lot of photos were taken by people I did not know of people I also did not know. Reviewing photos the day after the party, I found a close-up of male genitalia that, judging by size, I am sorry to say were not my own.
Since I was and am still married, it was good and proper that I was the only person at the party who did not “get lucky” that night. Looking back now, I believe a few young ladies did make passes at me. It is hard to be certain; perhaps in Romania, nipple rings are a topic for casual conversation. Also, there is always a short latency period before I realize I have been the object of an attempted seduction, usually around 20 years.
I recall urging a young woman to patch things up with her recently discarded boyfriend. Said boyfriend, besotted in both senses of the word, leaned against a conveniently stationary wall, head bobbing like a toy bulldog on a dashboard. I pointed out that they were just like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, and as such, belonged together forever.
This soiree marked the second time I got drunk wholly without intention. It was not a demanding accomplishment; indeed it was as easy as falling off a wagon. I felt there should be obvious, unmistakable warnings of impending intoxication, such as vertigo, slurred speech, or a sudden inclination to argue which is funnier, “cumquat” or “weasel.”
At daybreak, the rising sun revealed unconscious revelers strewn about like devalued beanie babies. The hostel floor resembled nothing so much as Gettysburg after the battle, albeit with fewer amputations but a comparable amount of groaning.
We cautiously picked our way across the floor, down the stairs, and out the door. When we arrived back at Valeria’s place, I was still thoroughly sloshed, perhaps called that because of the appalling sounds your guts emit as you stagger along.
As expected after such bacchanalian excess, I did not feel like a million bucks. I did not even feel like a million Romanian lei, which were worth about three bucks or something – who could convert currency when the world kept spinning like that?
I relinquished my party favors around noon while kneeling in a flower bed outside Valeria’s front window. Nestled among the little red flowers, I considered expiring right there with a funeral bouquet so conveniently close at hand.
After recovering in Brasov that day and the next, Jose, Valeria, Randy and I boarded the train to the well preserved medieval town of Sighișoara. Pronounced Siggy Shwara, it was the birthplace in 1431 of Wallachian prince Vlad III, also known as Vlad Țepeș, also known as Dracula. Vlad the Impaler to his friends.
On Halloween, we attended another party at our hostel in Sighișoara. Still a bit green around the gills à la the Creature from the Black Lagoon, I resolved to put the “I can’t” in intoxicant.
Lack of costumes did not keep Transylvanian locals from schooling us regarding Halloween revelry. There were amazing feats of drunken dexterity. One fellow painted a colorful, Picasso-esque mural while gripping the brush with his naked bottom, surely a technique that Michelangelo soberly avoided.
Just before midnight, a small group of us wandered up to the medieval Church of the Dominican Monastery above the city. After admiring the impressively mustachioed statue of Vlad III, we stepped over the low wall separating the church and the ancient cemetery. Fog was thick, wet and heavy in the graveyard, with an honest-to-goodness full moon and a few distant lights shining faintly through the mists. The church bell struck midnight, prompting a graveyard dog to begin howling. A shiver tingled along my spine as if the sinister eyes of Lugosi himself were watching from the shadows.
Afterwards, we made our way by moonlight back down the hill to the hostel. In the days to come, Randy and I visited Budapest, Vienna and London, while Jose decided to save money by staying in Romania with his sister. Ours was a soggy adventure as it poured cold rain virtually the whole trip after we left Romania. Perhaps Jose had the right idea, or at least the drier one.
For me, no Halloween has ever equaled foggy graveyard, full moon, dog howling, birthplace of Dracula, midnight clock ringing, Transylvania Halloween. I would give my sharpened plastic eye teeth to do it all again.
